Amazing Hong Kong

    The first time I visited Hong Kong was in 1950. I was 17 and I hung out there for a month, living in a flat of a good friend of my parents. That was a wonderful time, young, carefree, and just out of high school. I explored the city with a girl my age, who had also just moved to Hong Kong, and who I had just met. That was a long time ago.

    Since those heady days of yesteryear I have been there a few more times, the last time before the transfer of sovereignty on July 1997. Hong Kong always amazes me; there is the feverish kaleidoscope of colors, humanity, and movement.

    But things do change over the years. Dozens of skyscrapers have been added to the landscape, some of them housing huge international conglomerates, others to give housing to the thousands of people working hard and doggedly to eke a meager living and to save enough money to send their kids to school and to University. Hong Kong Harbor was full of junks when I was there the first time. This time the only junks there are for the tourists. There are just a few ships around. Seemingly lost in the vast expanse are a few cruise ships in the harbor. The Star Ferry still gamely makes its regular crossing between Kowloon and the island of Hong Kong, knowing that most of the traffic now goes through the tunnels under the sea.

    The harbor used to be a very important commercial port, but now Shanghai is taking away a lot of the business and the freighters are now container ships heading for the container harbor, the second largest in Asia. In Aberdeen fishermen and their families used to live on the water in their boats; now they have been moved to one of those nameless skyscrapers being frenetically built everywhere in Hong Kong today. In Causeway Bay there used to be sampans operating as small restaurants, where you climb and sit in the rolling boat and watch as they prepare seafood on the small deck in a couple of big woks and they give you a roll of toilet paper in lieu of napkins. They are there not anymore, I suppose for hygienic reasons.

    Hong Kong is actually very kind to older tourists. I am one of them now. There is the senior Octopus card, which allows you sharply discounted prices on the ferries, the subway, the trams and the buses, as well as other things. You get discounts for entries to museums and on many tours. Middle-aged people often get up in moving vehicles to offer you their seat; younger people usually don’t do that, similar to in every other places in the world. In some airline check-in areas there is a special counter for disabled passengers, passengers with children and senior citizens. You will be helped without having to wait in that interminably long queue.

    We had an interesting experience checking into a Hong Kong Airlines flight in Hong Kong airport. The checkin clerk noted we were seniors and she immediately offered and then called somebody to help us get to the boarding gate. At first we demurred, but she insisted and we acquiesced. Three, yes, three Hong Kong Airlines employees came by, took our hand luggage and whisked us through the employee entrance through the security check and then through immigration. Then they led us down an elevator, caught an airport train, then we went up an elevator. (it was further than we thought so we were glad they were there to help us.) The boarding gate was indeed quite a distance away and not that easy to find. They then invited us to sit down in the waiting area, while they discreetly moved away.

    When the passengers started boarding the plane, they came back and took us to the gate for first class passengers to let us go in ahead of the unwashed masses. Amazing. Three uniformed employees spending an hour at least to get us from checkin desk into the plane. One of the few times we were glad we were old.